Friday, January 2, 2015

New discovery of Buddhist sculptures near Taxila in Pakistan

Most
of us must have read about “Taxila (Original Sanskrit name
Takshasheela),” as one of the two great universities of ancient
India. Wikipedia describes it as;

“Takshashila
became a noted centre of learning including the religious teachings
of Hinduism at least several centuries BCE, and continued to attract
students from around the old world until the destruction of the city
in the 5th century. At its height, it has been suggested that
Takshashila exerted a sort of "intellectual suzerainty"
over other centres of learning in India.and its primary concern was
not with elementary, but higher education.Generally, a student
entered Takshashila at the age of sixteen. The Vedas, the ancient and
the most revered Hindu scriptures, and the Eighteen Silpas or Arts,
which included skills such as archery, hunting, and elephant lore,
were taught, in addition to its law school, medical school, and
school of military science. Students came to Takshashila from far-off
places such as Kashi, Kosala and Magadha, in spite of the long and
arduous journey they had to undergo, on account of the excellence of
the learned teachers there, all recognized as authorities on their
respective subjects.”

However
it appears that Takshasheela was never a university in the modern
sense, where the teachers have official membership of particular
colleges. There were no purpose-built lecture halls and residential
quarters. The university had the Gurukul system, where the students
stayed with the teachers. The contemporary Nalanda university on the
other hand was more like today's universities.

Over
the centuries, as Taxila expanded as a city also, number of religious
institutions grew around it. Buddhism being the predominant religion
of those times, all these institutions were essentially Buddhist
monasteries. A few examples can be listed as Jaulian, Mohra Moradu
and Dharmarajika. There were others in the same area, that are lesser
known. Of these, surely the most enchanting and the least known or
visited is the Bhamala monastery.

Salman
Rashid is a Pakistani writer and a fellow of Royal Geographical
society. He is also an explorer and writes mostly about his
explorations, history and travel. He describes Bhamala monastery
in his blog
in these words and I quote:

“ Situated
on an elongated hill above the right bank of the Haro River where the
valley is only a couple of hundred metres wide, Bhamala is as
secluded as it can get. On three sides the hills loom high, only to
the southwest is the view open where the narrow valley looks into
what was once a large depression containing a few villages but now
lies submerged under the placid blue waters of Khanpur Dam.”

Salman
rashid, adds further ;

“ If
it has a unique setting among the other Taxilan monasteries, Bhamala
also has one distinctive feature of archaeological interest: its main
stupa is built upon a cruciform base as opposed to the circular
stupas in the other monasteries. Long before John Marshall struck the
first spade to uncover its secrets in 1931, this stupa had already
been dug into and somewhat damaged by treasure hunters. A reminder of
that act of vandalism is the cleft running clear across the body of
the structure.

The
area immediately around the stupa base is paved with terra-cotta
tiles which is another one of its unique features. Arrayed around the
main stupa and just outside this paved area is a number of smaller
votive stupas. To the east, the monastery itself sits behind its high
wall with a gate facing the main stupa. Like the other monasteries,
the monks’ rooms run around the wall that forms the perimeter and
look inward to the courtyard. The standard feature of the central
water tank is missing here, perhaps because of the nearness to the
Haro just below the hill.”

Taxila
and along with it the Buddhist monasteries around, met their end in
the early years of the 6th
century, when the Indian subcontinent was invaded by the savage
Central Asiatic Huns led by Mehr Gul (Known as Mihirakula in
Sanskrit literature). “ Rajatararangini,” a famous book written
in 1160 as a chronicle of kings of Kashmir says that this barbarian
was a killer of thirty million people. He had no pity either for
women or children or the elderly and that his progress across the
country was marked by a dark cloud of crows and vultures keen to feed
on the corpses the savages left behind.

The
area was excavated during 1863-64 by Sir Alexander Cunningham, the
father of Indian archaeology, in 1863–64 and in 1872–73, along
with other sites around Taxila. This work was continued by Sir John
Hubert Marshall, who over a 20-year period, completely exposed the
ancient site and its monuments. John Marshall found that the main
Stupa was already robbed of the relics and was cut in half, when he
excavated it. The monastic establishment located to the east of the
main Stupa is considered as the main monastery of the site and was
partially excavated by Marshall. Archaeological society of India's
annual report for years 1930-34 gives a detailed report on findings
at Bhamala. This report also mentions about a stucco relief panel of
special interest, because it is the only stucco relief from the
North-West which depicts the Buddha's death-scene. This panel is
believed to be
preserved in the Taxila museum. The report also mentions that besides
the deposits of coins and other small objects obtained from the
stupas, some 30 pieces of stucco sculpture, chiefly detached heads of
statues, were recovered from the Stupa Court, and a number of coins
and a few other antiquities from the monastery area. The report
however mentions that most of the artifacts found were from 4th
or 5th
century.

Presently,
fresh excavations are being carried out at Bhamala ruins by
archaeologists from the the Hazara University, Mansehra in Pakistan.
This week it was reported that archaeologists have discovered new
Buddhist sculptures and heads during the latest excavation.
Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province-archaeology and museum
director- Abdul Samad says that these newly found sculptures and
heads, date back to second to fifth century BC.

This
finding is obviously of great significance, because it would mean
that the Bhamala monastery was in existence even during regimes of
Alexander the great, Chandragupta Maurya and Emperor Ashoka and
continued for next 700 or 800 years till it was burnt down in early
sixth century by Hun invaders.